The pop star and Oscar winner spoke through tears as she recalled her trauma during an appearance in The Me You Can’t See, a new mental health docuseries starring and co-created by Prince Harry and Oprah Winfrey.
In the first episode of the show, Gaga says that she had become self-harming since she was “very young” and that many of her problems stemmed from trauma she experienced as an aspiring musician.
“I was 19 years old and employed in the industry when a producer told me, ‘Take your clothes off,’” Gaga recalls. “I said no and left, and they threatened to burn all of my music,” she said. And they didn’t stop asking me questions, and I just froze and… I don’t even remember.”
She added: “The person who raped me dropped me off pregnant on a corner”.
The 35-year-old first spoke about the alleged rape in 2014 and told Howard Stern it left her “a shell of her former self” and that she “couldn’t accept it” and blamed herself.
Gaga added at the time: “It changed who I was completely. It changed my body, it changed thoughts.”
The ordeal also left her with Post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and because she never dealt with it properly at the time or told anyone, she began to experience excruciating pain all over her body that “mimicked the illness she felt after being raped”.
Years later, Gaga said she had a “complete psychotic break” and was in an “ultra state of hysteria,” which caused her to cancel several dates on a world tour. She later realized it was resurfaced sexual assault trauma.
She recalled, “I couldn’t feel my own body.” “I was in excruciating pain at first, then numb, and then sick for weeks. I realized it was the same pain I felt when the person who raped me dumped me pregnant on a street corner near my parents’ house because I was vomiting and sick. Since I had been raped and had been imprisoned in a studio for months.”
Gaga said it took her two and a half years to heal, but that “being activated once” is all it takes for her to revert to physical and emotional pain.